


Dictator's Cut Series: Shadowboxer, Grave Memory

by glinda4thegood



Series: Dictator's Cut: Missing Scenes [1]
Category: Shadowboxer (2006)
Genre: Assassins, F/M, Sex and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:39:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shadowboxer is a flawed film starring Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding, Jr., with gratuitous sex between secondary characters, and some lovely cinematography. Scene selected for my first <i>Dictator's Cut</i> fic: Dying of lung cancer, Rose wishes to end life on her own terms, while she is happy. She asks Mikey to shoot her after they have sex one last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dictator's Cut Series: Shadowboxer, Grave Memory

Mikey lays naked on raw, loamy mud.

Rain pools on his back, channels between buttocks like a small waterfall, drips over his head and cheeks. Broken clumps of earth lie cupped beneath his hands. He thinks her breasts must feel this way now, hard, cold, wet.

Rain runs over his forehead, soaks eyelashes and courses between eye and nose. He remembers how Rose rubs the washcloth over his head, squeezes warm water over his neck and back, and it seems the rain turns warm. He wonders how it will be possible to stand upright and walk away when half of him is dead and buried in this place.

~ ~ ~

His first mother rarely touches him, except for a fleeting hug, or kiss on the cheek. Daddy says it's wrong for a woman to keep pawing at her son. He uses the belt when she forgets. Mikey has nightmares after Rose takes him away, not because of what she did, but because the helplessness he feels when his first mother dies is still vivid in his mind. Rose wakes when she hears his cries, carries him to the tub and soothes him with warmth and touch.

Rose stops giving him baths when he turns 10.

For a long time he wonders what he did wrong. Rose tells him that part of growing up is learning to do things for yourself, but when she moves him to a bed of his own the hurt returns, along with fear she intends to leave him _for your own good_. He hears this phrase from adults constantly.

It is a difficult time for Mikey. Kids at school make fun of his lisping speech, and the fact he has a white mother. Rose compromises for a while, holds him until he falls asleep, then returns to her own bed. She finds a gym, the big black trainer everyone calls _KayOh,_ and tells him to teach Mikey how to handle himself. The first time he beats a schoolyard bully nearly to death, Rose kisses his forehead and tells the principal to _fuck off and die_ when, outraged, he outlines the punishment he has planned for Mikey.

They move and change schools, more than once. Mikey continues to box, and run, and his body grows hard muscle. Bullies do not seek him out. Reading is difficult for him and he asks to leave school. Rose refuses to let him quit, and he graduates just before he turns 19. It is a struggle, but Mikey always does what she asks.

For over ten years he watches her with the guns. She teaches him how to handle and care for them, but doesn't let him shoot. _After you graduate, I'll teach you to shoot,_ she says.

Mikey waits.

As he focuses on the physical demands of training, mind and body often drift apart. Mikey constructs a vision around Rose, and returns to it whenever body or mind stress. _She stands in the doorway with her gun. His father's body lies between them, belt still clutched in one stiffening hand. She is the most beautiful thing Mikey has ever seen, stronger than his weak mother, far stronger than the dead man at his feet._ As years pass Rose changes in appearance, but she always looks the same to him. Beautiful. Strong.

They move again after he graduates, travel around the country. Mikey learns new, practical things about maneuvering through the adult world in a quiet, inconspicuous way. Rose keeps her word, and he learns to shoot her guns. She gives him guns of his own, and explains in detail what she does to earn the money that makes it possible for them to live a comfortable life.

He turns 20 while they're in California, and Rose talks to him about girls and sex. Mikey has noticed for a while, how people look at them when they go into restaurants and bars. He understands about sex, isn't interested in girls his age. They all look weak. When Rose tells him she has arranged for a woman to teach him about sex, the same way she arranged for KayOh to teach him about self-defense, Mikey nearly tells her _no_ for the first time in his life.

Instead he asks her to teach him.

 _You're not my mother,_ he lies. He has come to understand why Rose quit giving him baths. The rest of the world has ideas, what Rose calls _values_ that Mikey doesn't always agree with, but he respects as part of what he needs to do to remain inconspicuous.

 _No, I'm not your mother. We're closer than any mother and son could be._ Rose thinks it over, then agrees. She will teach him how women dress, and what their bodies say when they move. She will teach him how female biology works, and how a woman's body responds to the act of sex. She will help him understand things about his own body.

The first time she takes her clothes off and touches him she says, _This will be about your body._ He buries himself between her legs and rides her until they are sweat-drenched and gasping. When he comes he sees the vision, her face, her gun, and feels the ghost of his father's body on his legs.

After he calms down Mikey sees a new expression on her face, and knows he will never have to sleep without her again.

Rose asks him questions about how he feels when he comes. She tells him that the second time will be about her body, and he will do exactly what she tells him to do. Rose tells him what she feels when he touches her, how she feels when he is inside her. She tells him how it feels when she comes.

Afterward he touches her breasts, wondering at the contrast between soft rounded flesh and the hardness of her nipples, touches taut muscle on her belly and the golden hair between her legs. _You're so strong, Rose,_ he says. _Did I do it right?_

 _You did very well,_ Rose says. _Would you like me to give you a bath now, Mikey?_

~ ~ ~

Mikey rises from the wet, black earth above her unmarked grave. Rose is still strong at the end. He sees it in her face as he takes her, feels it as her body clenches around him, knows it as she mimes a final kiss.

 _I want to die happy, and strong,_ she tells him.

 _I know how strong you are_ is understood between them. Mikey doesn't think it strange she trusts him to do this job for her. And with her death she teaches one last lesson he isn't sure she meant to teach him.

Death is hardest on the living, and death always leaves a hole.

Mikey picks up the shovel, finds his clothes in the wet grass, and returns to the house. Half of him has died, half of him is buried. He dimly understands Rose thought she could leave something to fill the hole in him. Mikey doesn't think this is possible, but her wishes in the matter were clear. He will care for the baggage she leaves behind, care for the child and woman who are little more than rescue pets.

Mikey always does what Rose asks.


End file.
